“What do you think about if I did an investigative report on what our legal street address is? You know, since we live in the county – what should we technically put in place of the city? Legally, is our address ‘Birmingham’ because we’re in the metro area, or ‘(unnamed snooty suburb)’ because we have their zip code, or ‘Unincorporated Jefferson County’ because we belong to no one? Or do we not even have a legal address?”

“You can investigate that, but I don’t think it’d make a very interesting blog post…”

“Oh. Even if I called the Postmaster General’s Headquarters and grilled them about it?”

“Even if.”

I took his word for it and have not called the Postmaster General. But fortunately, shortly after this conversation, someone offered themselves up to be investigated.

That someone hacked both my PayPal account and my old email address.

I discovered it quite by accident a couple of weeks ago, and it was a very bizarre hack job.

On my PayPal account,

1. They had replaced my email address with theirs.
2. They had removed my credit card from my account.
3. They had changed my mailing address to theirs.
4. They moved my credit card to another PayPal account that they opened under the same email address (I suspect some sort of account-merge option, although PayPal vehemently denies any possibility of a security breach such as that on their part.)

On my Email Account, all they did was set all of my new emails to go to the “recently deleted” folder.

But what they did not do was the strange part.

1. They did not change either account’s password.
2. They did not make any purchases or transfer any money on my PayPal account, credit card or their new PayPal account.
3. They did not, that I could tell, send or receive any emails from my account.

Either these were the stupidest criminals to ever discover the internet, or they were taking their sweet time (it looks like they had access for five days,) or their master plan was higher than my imaginings could comprehend.

And my imagination spent quite a while on attempting to comprehend it.

First, I did all the things that you are supposed to do in such situations – I changed my passwords, cancelled my credit cards, checked all other accounts, and undid all of their bizarre informational hacking.

But not without first storing their information in a safe place.

Then I started the fun part: the stalking and reporting.

Thanks to their leaving of (what was presumably their) mailing address into my account, it was high enjoyment.

I pulled up their house on Google Streetview and pretended that I was doing a real-time surveillance as I stalked their every move.

I learned that the house had just been built last year, was built on the remains of a trailer park, cost $1,100 in rent, would sell for (approximately) $101,560, and had just been rented out seven days beforehand – presumably to my perps. I knew the median house value in their neighborhood, the crime rates, demographics, the median income, and had streetviewed a nice little trip down their city block.

It took a little extra work since they’d just moved in, but I managed to identify the occupants. In fact, there were seven adult occupants in that tiny house, and I had their names, vitals, and ages.

“Yes ma’am, and their house is zero point nine miles from where you’re sitting right now.”

I wasn’t entirely sure that she knew what the internet was, let alone PayPal, so I tried to reiterate the importance.

“I have a feeling that this might be a ring of criminals, and they most likely have far more victims than just myself.”

“Oh yes ma’am. We will definitely investigate it. And you said it was…internet fraud?”

Ultimately, I don’t know if my criminal friends will ever get caught, although I am checking in on my multiple case numbers with all of the various criminal justice organizations regularly. And I also still don’t understand their methods and strategies, despite my many quiet moments of pondering.

Comments

I actually laughed out loud when I read “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!” I love that movie. My little brother and I used to watch it all the time and we still say that line to each other!

Oooh, a mystery! I do love a good mystery (although I’m sorry it involved the compromise of your personal info). I think I could really enjoy having one of those jobs where all you do is Internet research.

I was screening a potential renter this week and everything looked good except credit report didn’t pass. They could afford the rent, so we decided to check out references and maybe give a 2nd chance. They didn’t put a phone # down for their current landlord (another red flag) but did for a previous. This landlord said they lived there 3-4 years, and left it in great condition. It wasn’t matching how long they had lived at this address on report (never stayed more than a year in 1 place) so I did the reverse look-up on the phone number, You guessed it – it was his Dad! Haha! They think were idiots!

Wow. I have always enjoyed reading your blog, and now you are officially one of my favorite people. Ever. If we lived closer, and I were not old enough to be your mother, we would definitely be friends. we can still be friends, it just won’t be as fun.

I would have reacted the same exact way. In fact, it’s almost more creepy and criminal the extent to which I would google and stalk such perps compared to the hack job they would hypothetically attempt. I ain’t ashamed… I’m creepy and I know it,

Yes! Anytime anyone asks me if I’m worried about people knowing so much about me, I always tell them “Stalking me is a really bad idea, because I will stalk you back, and I guarantee you that I’m ten times better at it.”

Ha! That’s some skills! And a bit terrifying to think how easy it is to find out all this information about people.

We did something similar when an un-insured guy wrote off my car then stopped returning phone calls. We found out his parents and called them, his work and called them and eventually managed to get him to court and get the money. It’s a pity the police didn’t do the hard work for us, but at least it was resolved, even if we were out of pocket for nearly a year.